Vulnerability, Disability, and Public Health Crises

Abstract

This article suggests that those individuals typically acknowledged as vulnerable during public health crises, such as pandemics, are often-times doubly so. I suggest that individuals can be vulnerable in a person-affecting way (in a way that suggests they are at greater risk to their physical person) as well as in a personhood-affecting way (in a manner that results in individuals being at risk of having their personhood or status as valuable members of a society challenged). I suggest that the former notion of vulnerability coincides with many existing accounts of vulnerability and that subsequently, many of the more standard arguments for moral and justice-based obligations to minimize such vulnerability, hold. I also suggest that the latter notion of vulnerability adds another layer of vulnerability to those that we typically view to be at risk. I argue that personhood-vulnerability constitutes a novel interpretation of vulnerability than expands our ideas of the kinds of harm that emerge during public health crises.